PitchIt

PitchIt is UVic's elevator pitch competition, open to all UVic students, staff, Faculty and alumni within 3 years and current Coast Capital Savings Innovation Centre clients. You get 90 seconds (the length of a typical elevator ride) to describe your entrepreneurial or social business concept to a panel of experts. The top 5 most viable business concepts win prizes of $300 each.

Got an idea? You're halfway there.

To participate, you must meet the following criteria:

You are a current UVic student, staff or faculty member, or alumni within 3 years of graduation.

You may participate as an individual or you may present in a team of up to three people. The team lead must be a current UVic student, faculty/staff or alumni (within 3 years) but the accompanying team member(s) need not necessarily be affiliated with UVic.

Teams may either have only their team lead deliver the pitch, or up to all three team members may participate in the actual presentation of the pitch.

Entered PitchIt or PlanIt with this idea and won a prize in the past? You are welcome to pitch again, but the pitch needs to be significantly improved between sessions.

Learn the art of the pitch with Dr. Brock Smith.

﻿﻿Want to PitchIt? Put these dates in your calendar:

The next PitchIt competition will be March 1, 2018

To register for the PitchIt Live event, submit the following form:

Download the PDF, fill in the form (either using the "add text" feature in Adobe or by hand), save or scan it to your computer.

Email the completed application form PDF to icpoc@uvic.ca before the registration deadline.

Once we've devised a schedule, we will email back with details and information for PitchIt.

How to prepare a fast pitch for investors:

Putting your deal into a package that can be communicated and shared quickly and efficiently is a critical element of raising funds.

Your potential investor is likely to make an instant judgement based on the strength of your first spoken sentences or the first few lines in your executive summary.

So how do you get around this communication problem? First you must disambiguate, or simplify and clarify, what you are attempting to communicate.

It is this simple: First moments matter most. The whole point of the "fast pitch" is to get investors interested enough in you to get their business cards and to agree to meet with you at a later date, or at least have them refer you to someone else who might be interested in your deal.

Investors know that the way you will engage your initial customer base is through a fast pitch. It is the same for attracting strategic partners and even recruiting executives, which means that in general, the investors know that entrepreneurs best suited for funding can usually articulate their venture's value proposition within a sentence or two.

It is important to cite references, stats or information to add credibility to your deal.

Questions your pitch should answer:

What is your product or service (concept)?

What are your benefits?

Who is your market? What is your market demand? How large is the market?

What is your revenue model? How do you expect to make money?

What is your market strategy?

Who is your competition? Don't have any? Think again.

What is your competitive advantage? How is your concept different and why you have an advantage over the competition.

What are the judges looking for?

Degree of innovation/newness: To what extent is the concept dramatically different from what exists in the market?

Overt benefit/product-market match: To what extent is there an overt, specific benefit in meeting the needs/solving the pain of an identifiable target market?

Feasibility/reason to believe: To what extent is the concept believable? e.g. substance, supporting research, a link to 'self" etc.

Market potential/social impact: To what extent does the concept create economic or social value or otherwise have potential for impact?

Overall presentation: To what extent was the pitch clear, engaging and convincing?

Want to watch the pitches?

PitchIt is open to the public so feel free to invite friends and family or anyone who shares your entrepreneurial spirit.

Each participant/team will be given 90 seconds to make their pitch to a panel of judges. Your presentation may be followed up with 2 minutes of Q&A from the judges.

Light networking reception to follow before announcement of the PitchIt cash prize winners. Take this opportunity to meet other entrepreneurial students and Coast Capital Savings Innovation Centre Advisers from the business community. You never know who will be interested in your idea!